By Philip English
AUCKLAND - The Department of Conservation is under fire for setting up administration offices on the North Head historic reserve.
The North Shore City Council believes the department should have obtained resource consent before moving in eight months ago, as Devonport residents in the Friends of North Head group
are taking legal action.
The group is preparing to fight the department's presence on North Head in the High Court, claiming it contravenes provisions of the Reserves Act. It aims to file a case for a declaratory judgment against the department this week.
The department, however, considers it did not require a resource consent to move in and that it would win any legal battle over its authority to base an office on the reserve.
The Deputy Mayor of North Shore City, Dianne Hale, said the council's concerns were being talked through with the department, but it was keeping its legal options open.
She said the council wanted the department to apply for retrospective consent.
"It's not the preferred way of doing things, I'd have to say. We certainly prefer things to be done prior to things being in place, but it certainly isn't uncommon."
Writer Kevin Ireland, a member of the friends group, said their intention was to stop the department from occupying offices in the middle of the most visited reserve in Auckland.
"It seems to us extraordinary that a Government office should be in parkland ... We don't see why [the department] should give itself the liberty to set up its offices on our parks. I don't know where they have got their advice from that this somehow fits into the general purposes of the Reserves Act.
"It is quite clearly against it, we think ... The floodgate possibilities are frightening and horrific. Who is going to move in next?"
The Auckland conservancy community relations manager, Warwick Murray, said up to 16 administrative and field staff had been using two restored buildings on North Head this year.
"We feel we have all the statutory authority for those offices to be there."
